And unfortunately I'm all too familiar with references to the answer to life, the universe and everything.

For instance, here's another example of it (that will also serve to illustrate my badge of geekiness)... in the db.localhost file on BIND nameservers, the serial number set for the localhost entry, which essentially never changes, is set to 42 in honor of Douglas Adams.

zengargoyle wrote:sigh, nobody caught my HHGTTG reference... therefore you all fail the second question of the geekiness test.

Oh, wait, that 42. Boy, I haven't read that series in many years. (I think Adams lost his magic in the later books, but those first two were hysterical as was the opener of the third with the expensive skinned alien insulting the galaxy.) Now if I had seen this equation back when I was in college I would have solved the integral and gotten the reference. But college was a long time ago.

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Because you couldn't solve the integral? You're in high school, I thought. Have you even had calculus yet? If you haven't how you possibly be expected to solve it.

Or

Because you didn't catch a pop reference to a book that came out before you were even born? I saw on Amazon.com that they're issuing a special 25th anniversary edition of Hitchhikers. (Now, I'm feeling very old. :p)

Absolutely no reason for you to feel stupid, Hatori.

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douglas adams books are the geeks geek books.. honestly he is a self professed mega geek.. and he claims to write to the mega geeks themselves, I would imagine those that get his humor would be promptly named geeks by him and others that get the humor too.

two_heads_talking wrote:douglas adams books are the geeks geek books.. honestly he is a self professed mega geek.. and he claims to write to the mega geeks themselves, I would imagine those that get his humor would be promptly named geeks by him and others that get the humor too.

Not now he isn't. Douglas Adams died six years ago. And I know you're making a point about the geekiness of his books, but it's just a tad creepy for you to keep referring to a dead guy with the present tense. So figuring you didn't know he died (quite young, only 49), I thought I'd tell you.

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two_heads_talking wrote:douglas adams books are the geeks geek books.. honestly he is a self professed mega geek.. and he claims to write to the mega geeks themselves, I would imagine those that get his humor would be promptly named geeks by him and others that get the humor too.

nope, i didn't realize he was dead.. I was not a big fan to be honest.. I never got his humor. Some of my friends were huge fans.. to the point of quoting "lock, stock and barrel" everything he ever wrote or produced.. it got to the point I would tune them out when they started quoting his books..

That is not even humour. And no I did not get it. Maybe that is just my autistic mind?

Was it saying that the ships float because they just do? I am confused.

This type of humor is comparable to a paradigm shift: you are put into one train of thought and expect one outcome, but when the outcome is not as expected you have a reaction to it (in this situation, you're supposed to find it funny).

We use phrases like "in much the same way" (or simply "like") to draw comparisons and similarities. "He eats like a pig" or "I slept like a log"

In this sentence, we are expecting a comparison to show similarity, but instead of showing what object A is similar to, it is shown what it is dissimilar to.

Another thing I think makes it funny is that drawing a connection between what bricks don't do and what these ships do do to try and explain their behavior is absurd. Bricks don't do a lot of things (they don't do an infinite number of things, in fact).

Using this logic I could use what bricks don't do to explain any object in the universe.